


sincerity

by joeri



Category: Homestuck
Genre: ...kinda? @ that last tag, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Character Study, Depression, Drabble, Emetophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, M/M, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 16:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15912468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: you don't know what that is.





	sincerity

**Author's Note:**

> reread hamsteak recently, have a lot of feelings abt this kid

You love him but you can’t tell him. Especially not when he’s running his fingers along the scars in your neck— the scars that _you_ put there. No sense in rolling over and clinging sharply. No sense in ruining the gentle calm you’ve established simply by feigning sleep, feigning apathy. It’s working so well so far, so casual and so half-heartedly honest.

Can it be honesty if its the emotion you want it to be?

You love him but you cannot tell him— cannot express how the gooseflesh spreads with every kiss down your neck, and how the pinprick sized lumps of skin raise around your throat to strangle when you hear him whimper just so into your shoulder, “Please don’t scare me again.”

Those scars, a fading memory of hospital visits, the scent of antiseptic and chemical confusion. It’s the smell of resolution and doctors talking so dour in hushed tones.

_Don’t talk too loud about the shoe string he’d tied ‘round the closet bar_

You’d both laughed. What is that thing even called? Kinda like the red flappy do-hicky used by the mailman.

You’d chuckled together, and you’d kept these feelings buried so far inside your sternum, you’re certain they’ve got no choice but to leak out slow around your teeth when you’re vomiting guts and whiskey into the john (while Dave winces, “Don’t call it ‘the john’.”).

Jake presses cold rag to forehead and spots medicine in the toilet, and you still call it the john for funsies.

And you cannot tell him how much you love him, skittish as he is.

Spellbound by everything that makes you stable and powerful, he couldn’t possibly handle the truth of it all— how whole he makes you feel. In truth, you don’t know why his hands scan the xylophone ribs of your sides and the knife-sharp fringes of your hips, and why he willingly cuts himself on them nightly.

This bed is full of more than just your own blood. What hurts the most is being aware of it. Your breath turns ragged. He thinks you’re having a nightmare.

His lips connect with your temple like a fist to the gut: five-fingered and instinctual, like everything you need at once. He mumbles like a preacher into your brain, “It’s alright, I’m here,” and you don’t deserve it.

Not then and not now.

His arms around you feel tense, twitchy, and any moment he’ll abandon. It’s true. You know it better than anyone else, no matter what he or what anyone else says. You’re _that_ convinced.

Typical of you to think you know better than him about what he wants and what he thinks, and what he _needs_.

This understanding sickens you, and you cannot tell him how you feel.

The bile settles in your throat and it makes your finger-bones shake.

“I’m not gonna leave,” he says, and you cannot tell him that he is.

Because then he will.

And no matter how much you've braced for impact, you will never be ready for that.


End file.
